In October, Gallup reported that Americans plan to spend an average of over $1,000 on holiday gifts this year. And whether you plan to spend that amount, more, or less, there are many ways to maximize your holiday shopping. Depending on where you’re making your purchases, you can 5, 10, or 15x your points and…
In our quest to de-mystify travel hacking, we’re continuing our series of sharing how many points and miles we earned from our trips. As we pursue our goal of visiting every U.S. National Park, we made a visit to the Seattle area. We did not redeem any points or miles to cover this trip. Rather,…
In early June, we took a trip to Southern California for four nights. P2 had some work meetings, so I decided to tag along. We didn’t use any points or miles for this trip. Some of P2’s expenses were covered by his company, and we covered all other expenses with our credit cards. With a…
When I got my first credit card, I opened the original Chase Freedom. It was an incredibly popular first credit card at the time, and it had (and still has) no annual fee. As a young professional just starting my career, I didn’t want to take on additional expenses in my budget. As I progressed…
As travel hackers, we’re always looking for the best ways to earn the maximum amount of points and miles. We try to do that by combining a variety of credit cards, portals, and other ways to spend less money / earn more points and miles (aka stacking). Last year, when we were just starting our…
What do we do when we only have enough points to cover one of our flights? There are times when we deliberately transfer our points (typically from Chase Ultimate Rewards) to United with a specific destination in mind and knowing the exact amount of miles we need. There are other times, however, when we realize…
Many travel hacking blogs will encourage you to open credit cards relatively frequently to earn points and miles for travel. That way, you can capitalize on the sign-up bonuses you receive from hitting the minimum spend in the first several months of having that credit card. And while I’ve certainly taken advantage of sign-up bonuses…
In the points and miles world, Chase Ultimate Rewards points are often regarded as the most valuable currency thanks to the variety of cards they have and the wide range of transfer partners available for the points. The original Freedom and Freedom Flex cards are valuable components of our points earning strategy because of the…
Here’s what to do with your travel hacking credit cards after you hit the sign-up bonus. If you’re interested in travel hacking, that probably means you’re using credit cards to travel (or would like to). And the easiest and fastest way to accrue the most amount of points and miles for travel is by opening…
It’s no secret that the fastest way to earn points and miles is through opening a new credit card and hitting the minimum spending requirement for the sign-up bonus. Depending on the new credit card, this can earn someone tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of points for future travel. But not everyone…